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1.3.4-Doeskin-pantaloons
Brick!Club 1.3.4: Tholomyes is so Merry that he sings a Spanish Ditty Or, In Which Tholomyes Offers you Asses. I haven’t been at Brick!Club in a while, so I don’t know what sort of analysis we are up to. Anyhow, my main thought on this chapter is - Fantine, why do you you even hang out with these people? Not that I have anything against the women, per se, by we know (if we’ve read the next chapter) that the guys are absolute douches. While Fantine doesn’t know this, it’s pretty clear that she doesn’t feel comfortable with the way that the group behaves - I mean, the poor girl thinks that going on a swing is beneath her. (But - spoilers! - she’s fine with sleeping with Tholomyes. It confuses me how Hugo emphasises very clearly that Fantine was really, really in love, while everyone else is just kind of having a laugh. And yet we really don’t see much interaction between Tholomyes and Fantine which actually suggests a relationship. Is this just Hugo poorly characterising anything ever done by women (which I wouldn’t put past him), or is he deliberately showing us how naive Fantine is, in that she thinks that this is a deep a loving relationship, when the reader can see that it’s so obviously not? The next question: Why is Fantine so virtuous, anyway? Does Hugo think it’s a good thing that she occasionally lapses into meditation, and thinks that swinging is uncouth? With his descriptions of how beautiful she is (assuming that outside reflects inside) and his assertion that unlike the others, Fantine was ‘good’ (I know I’m backtracking, but I read the last few chapters in one go) suggests that he genuinely sees her actions as more virtuous. And while I acknowledge - again - that Tholomyes isn’t exactly the world’s nicest guy, I don’t actually see anything negative in the way that the other girls behave. So what’s Hugo’s problem with enjoying yourself? On the one hand, he makes the outing look very positive, with all his descriptions of how pretty everything was, and how happy everything was, but on the other, if virtuous Fantine thinks it’s not much chop, then what is Hugo trying to tell us? Commentary Pilferingapples As has been discussed a little in some of the other posts, it seems like Fantine has to be set up as Super Pure because she’s the one who most requires reader sympathy, and she’s about to be doing something that the audience of her day would absolutely find objectionable (as would a distressing amount of the modern audience, really). Whatever the other three girls have or haven’t done (and it seems likely they’ve been not exactly keeping their affairs above the waistline, but then there’s a lot of things that can be done without pregnancy as a result…) they aren’t going to be prostituting themselves while being a focus character, so they don’t need as much justification. (also maybe Hugo just likes OTT virginal blond/es. Those of us with one foot on a barricade have pretty much been giggling and/or rolling our eyes about this all week, so, that’s the kind of highfalutin’ analysis this club gets into.;P Welcome!) Fantine has…really iffy taste in people, yeah. Between Tholomyes and the Thenardiers, poor woman…then again, maybe she realizes this is a one-sided relationship? Oh, that makes it worse. If she’s given herself over entirely to be in love, while knowing or suspecting Tholomyes is just indulging himself, that..that makes everything a lot worse (and the FMA translation, in that horribly painful description of the four relationships, just says Tholomyes ‘had’ Fantine. While everyone else is adored and idolized and loved. OUCH.). Also “not much chop” is my new favorite expression, thank you,